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FIRST AMONG
EQUALS
Newly certified practitioner Penny Lovett FAHRI believes there’s always more to learn about HR.
BY AMANDA WOODARD
CERTIFICATION
34
hrmonline.com.au
“I BEGAN TO SEE IT AS AN AREA THAT
I WANTED TO LEARN MORE ABOUT
AND TOWARDS WHICH I COULD
DEVELOP MY CAREER.”
PENNY LOVETT SAYS WE ARE LIVING THROUGH
exciting times in HR. What used to be a bit of a backwater, HR is
increasingly impacting on the fate and fitness of organisations.
“I’m really excited by the possibilities for H R in future years, as it’s
becoming clearer to the business community that effective H R is a
real differentiator to business performance.”
Lovett has spent much of her career working in HR, most notably
in senior roles with Bupa, Dulux Group, Pitcher Partners and ANZ,
focussing, as she says, “on the people piece of the puzzle.” Yet her
route into HR was via accountancy, where she worked as an auditor
for a professional services firm.
What brought about the change was a growing fascination
with how the experience of employees ultimately influenced the
experience of clients.
“I became aware that by getting it right with people, an
organisation is much better positioned to get it right with clients.
I began to see it as an area that I wanted to learn more about and
towards which I could develop my career.”
Lovett places emphasis on continuous learning and professional
development – no matter how senior you are in an organisation. That
appetite for knowledge, she believes, is not only a good personal
attribute but contributes to raising standards across the profession.
“The perception in many parts of various industries is that
HR isn’t contributing enough to meet business needs. There is an
increasing demand for HR to contribute at a strategic level and to
really focus on business performance through people. But at the same
time, H R departments are required to deliver day-to -day compliance
services – and that’s something that really can’t be overlooked.”
The challenge, says Lovett, is to create an effective H R department
or model to enable organisations to deliver on the operational
requirements while simultaneously focusing on things that are
driving organisational performance. “Getting that balance right is
crucial at that high performance level. So, too, is finding great HR
talent and developing the capability of HR professionals.”
AHRI’s certification program was a perfect response to those
business requirements, says Lovett.
“ When I first heard about the professional certification initiative,
my response was ‘At last!’. I think it’s a great thing because it enables
the HR profession to have a consistent way of certifying the people
who work in it. One of the HR profession’s challenges has been not
being able to measure the knowledge that we have and the skills that
we bring to the role. This certification process enables us to say, that
those people who achieve certification have met the standards that
are required to perform the HR role effectively’. We can move ahead
to have a much higher benchmark for HR capability in Australia.”
Lovett says she enjoyed putting together her case study for
assessment as part of the senior pathways program. She drew on a
project that she had worked on recently and measured the outcome
against the skills, knowledge and behaviours outlined in AHRI’s
Model of Excellence.
“It was a good learning experience because the Model of
Excellence provided an effective framework to assess and reflect on
what I had done and I learnt some really important things from it.”
Exploring what those lessons were in more detail, Lovett says
the case study was about how she had worked within an executive
leadership team to develop a new organisational structure and
leadership strategy.
“I reflected on my work, looking at how credible I was as I went
through the project and how I had applied my skills to resolve
issues that arose. I could see where the delivery had been strong but